Talk 1: The Gospel of Autonomy
Recently, Alecia Beth Moore, better known as ‘Pink’, came to Australia to perform her songs. Her concerts were filled with passionate followers who love her music and choreography which is a dynamic part of her performance.
Pink sings and proclaims an alternative gospel (or good news) that is powerful and captivates the imagination. From her album, ‘The Truth about Love’, her song entitled ‘Are We All We Are?’ gives a lens on reality “We are the people that you’ll never get the best of … Just sing it loud, until the kids will sing it right back. Are we all we are, are we all we are … Four, that’s how many years it took me to get through the lesson that I had to do it all on my own … “ [1] She is an evangelist for the kingdom centred on self.
The essence of this worldview is captured back in 1487, when Pico della Mirandola’s famous oration, ‘Oration on the Dignity of Man’, where he sees Adam as a creature free from the laws which govern the rest of creation and who “by their own free will … trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature … in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer.” [2] Hence, in this story, humanity becomes a law (nomo) unto themselves (auto). But remember back in the garden of Eden, the ultimate question in search of autonomy directed to Eve was, “Has God spoken?” (Genesis 3:1). The answer to that question meant life or death. Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian aptly said, “Faith is when the self wants to be itself… Sin is trying to be a self without God…..your identity is like a country without a king…”[3]
For the first time in the West, a whole civilisation has increasingly come to the belief that humanity itself is God; that is, we define our own essence. As gods then, we create our own utopia, a cultural development that is self-directed‑ and defined by own autonomous thinking. It is a kingdom without a King. Zygmunt Bauman describes this era as ‘liquid modernity’ with ‘solid realities’ now liquid and shifting. “It is the patterns of dependency and interactions whose turn to be liquified has now come. They are now malleable to an extent unexperienced by and unimaginable for past generations.” [4]
The Gospel of autonomy is “a discipleship program like no other,” [5] communicated through stories, social media, government, courts and schools, that you have the right to define your own self. But to believe that we can control and manipulate people and creation to progress from chaos to an ultimate state of harmony is nothing less than religion! To our dismay, in this ‘Age of Anxiety’ we discover that confessing to be wise outside of our Creator’s design, we have become fools who are experiencing the depths of our folly.
As educators in a globalised world, we proclaim the Gospel of Christ, not in a vacuum but as a ‘voice’ in contention with this alternative vision of the good life and the nature of humanness that it promotes. If we hope to raise students to be faithful and courageous disciples and leaders in this 21st Century context, we must demonstrate the Gospel of Christ as both countercultural, as well as culturally renewing. This mean as teachers; we must have a Biblical theological mindset that will cause us to think about our ministry of teaching in ways that are countercultural to our society’s conceptions of teaching but renewing of them.
When we consider how the Gospel of Autonomy is de‑forming our students, having a transformative education must be anchored in an understanding of hope. Our schools need to be signposts of hope in the 21st Century where the lives of teachers and our practice is shaped by purpose and by the outcomes and goals that are informed by a true vision of human life and the world. The future hope of God’s Kingdom has already broken into the present. So our school is a foretaste of God’s future for our students in the present as well as a preparation for that future. Our communities are to demonstrate the ‘new humanity’ solidly anchored in the kept promises of God in this alternative vision. “Solids are cast once and for all.” [6]
In this ‘Age of Anxiety’ how do we express hope as a primary way of engaging our students in life and thought? We need to tell a COSMIC story that constantly reaffirms that King Jesus reigns overall as he Has won the true battle over the principalities and powers. Human autonomy is a bankrupt story, a vain attempt to reclaim ground. Though living in a world without obedience to God’s wise and loving norms and standards has resulted in wars, hatred, greed, injustice and environmental damage, generating our current state of anxiety, the Bible gives us a profound hope for where our lives as God’s people and this planet are heading. It is a hope filled‑ story of new creation, re‑creation, that “promises continuity with the current order while also building discontinuity into the story.” [7]
In the talks to follow this term we will explore what a hope filled, renewed creation means for children understanding their gender, training them to be a digital citizen and living as ‘one’ whilst still being the ‘many’. Life in the Garden of Eden, lived the way it was designed to be and life in the eternal City, the way it will be, provides the vision for our existence lived during the ‘in-between’ time.
As author Stephen McAlpine says, we need to be ‘future‑proofed’. And the “Fun Fact (is): every generation of God’s people has been future‑proofed. We have everything we need. Time to figure out how that is going to play out in practice in this changing and challenging age.” [8]
“Those who work the land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies have no sense.”(Proverbs 12:11)
Grace and Peace
The Excellence Centre Team
[1] https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pink/areweallweare.html
[2] Brian J. Walsh & J. Richard Middleton, The Transforming Vision : Shaping a Christian WorldView, (Illinois: IVp Academic, 1984), 129
[3] Søren Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death: A New Translation, (New York: Liverright, 2023)
[4] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, (Cambridge: Policy, 2000), 8
[5] Stephen McAlpine, Futureproof – How to live for Jesus in a culture that keeps changing, (Australia: The Good Book Company, 2024), 36
[6] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 8
[7] Stephen McAlpine, Futureproof, 139
[8] Ibid, 13